


Life isn't fair, but sometimes it's honest.

by dawnofmandanceparty



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ableism, Abuse, Attempted Murder, Gen, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 02:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19898464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnofmandanceparty/pseuds/dawnofmandanceparty
Summary: Billy tries to die. It doesn't work.Steve takes care of him. It works okay.





	Life isn't fair, but sometimes it's honest.

Billy crashed the Camaro. 

That’s the first thing that someone tells Steve that makes sense, that gives him a better insight into the state that Billy is in. Everyone else is all, ‘Max’s brother was in an accident’ or ‘You know Billy Hargrove? He’s not doing too well’ or ‘He got really fucked up.’ True, yeah, but not at all helpful. Not in a way that matters. 

Billy crashed the Camaro. He wasn’t in a car accident, didn’t get in a crash with the Camaro. The way that Max says it, lips tight swallow heavy look down and right, tells Steve what’s up. ‘Billy crashed the Camaro’ implies intent. He took his car, one of the only things in the world he had ever loved, and sped up until something stopped it. It was a miracle he had lived. Steve wondered if he hadn’t wanted for something to stop him, too.

Steve has never seen Billy’s room before, but he can tell that things had been changed. Made less. The walls are bare. There are dark rectangles on the wall, poster tan lines. The gum of clear tape and the dust that sticks to it. Half full boxes that are labelled RECORDS and JEWELRY/BELTS and BOOTS. 

Billy’s curled up in bed, smaller than Steve would have ever imagined he’d be. His hair is shorn close to his head like an army cadet and a ropy scar curves over his left ear. When Steve calls his name, he doesn’t move. When Steve touches his arm he jolts into himself, like he’s trying to hide. Steve makes Max help him find the wheelchair (in the basement, shoved into a corner and covered in dust) and when they unbend his knees to put him in, he starts to cry. 

“It’s okay,” Steve finds himself mumbling. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” When he wraps Billy in his comforter Steve catches more than a whiff of ammonia, of damp earth. It’s better though, he decides, than having him face the world in a threadbare t-shirt and disposable briefs. 

+

Steve thinks about the last time they saw each other: The hastily planned going-away party Tommy H. had thrown together for him. Kind of an awkward apology, kind of an excuse to get black out drunk. 

What Steve remembers of the night comes to him in flashes -- cup after cup in his hand, the bitter bread taste of hops, sips from clear bottles that burned his throat. It was a good night, a typical party. Someone brought a boom box. Steve coasted on a solid buzz and Tears for Fears.

The crunch of gravel was just the signature sound of someone’s arrival at the quarry. It wasn’t out of place as people came and went to say their goodbyes, get a taste of music and night, drink on someone else’s dime. Instead of making a bee-line to the keg, however, Billy Hargrove came like a bullet through a flock of doves, scattering the people Steve had been talking to, thanks very much. Walking him back, back, into the woods at the edge of shattered stone.

“What do you--”

“Shut up, Harrington,” Billy snarled, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. Steve yelped and braced himself for a fist. 

Billy kissed hard, but his lips were soft. Steve shoved him away. He could hear his heart in his ears, taste where Billy had licked into his mouth. His shirt was stretched. He stared like Billy had just announced he was from the planet Mars, tried to forget that his first inclination had been to melt, tilt his head, kiss him back. 

Billy laughed once. Sharp, like a cough. Nothing was funny. He left without saying anything to anyone else. 

For the few days after, as things about that night came back to him, Steve would replay the event: The shake in Billy’s hands as they twisted up in his shirt. The single syllable of his laugh that sounded like being sick. He hadn’t even tried to hit Steve.

He wonders if he should have gone after Billy. He’s not sure it would have made a difference. 

+

Steve lives in a one room apartment about a five minute drive from the Indiana State campus, and he has resigned himself to sleeping on the couch for the rest of his life. Billy is creepy quiet for the first few weeks, and oh, how glad Steve is that all of this happened at the beginning of summer break. 

Something in Steve waits for Billy to snap out of it, waits for that lost look he has to tighten up into something more affronted. Cuss him out when he tries to shower him, maybe. Fight him for agency as he hefts him up from the bed. But Billy is heavy against him, and Steve always feels his legs shaking during the walk and when he lets him down gently into the lawn chair that Steve keeps in the shower, now. Washing Billy takes a long time. Steve moves slowly, because otherwise Billy will startle, or he’ll flinch when Steve does anything but dab the slowly healing bed sores on his right hip and between his knees. He is gentle with the shampoo, avoids touching the scar, rinses him with water that’s warm but not too hot, since he can’t really tell what Billy likes. 

Max had kept glancing down the street after they had put Billy in Steve’s car, hurrying him through what she knew about caring for her brother: Steve knows that he has to bring him to the washroom after meals, just in case. Steve knows that he has to tilt the cup carefully when he helps Billy drink or he’ll get the collar of his shirt damp, even underneath the bib. Steve knows that he has to chop down food kind of small, give him little bites, or else Billy will choke on what he has. 

Steve eventually learns things on his own, too: sometimes it’s hard to get Billy to drink, but he’ll easily demolish the entire glass when Steve presents him with strawberry juice. Billy won’t let Steve feed him carrots, but he will watch the path from fork to bowl to mouth when there’s broccoli for him. It’s kind of intense. 

+

Every so often, when Steve gets a call from Dustin, he puts Max on the phone. She usually asks how Billy is doing, and she asks if she can talk to him. Billy never responds, but Steve can see that he pays attention when he holds the phone up to his ear. Billy’s brow furrows just a little, the most pensive Steve ever sees him, and he stays stock still until Steve hears the click on the other end. 

Sometimes, Max talks to Steve instead. She tells him something that she had forgotten to mention about caring for Billy, or listens to Steve talk about what Billy likes to eat. One day, she talks about how the house was very quiet for a very long time, but then Billy pissed himself right after a shower and there was yelling and cussing and the sharpthud sound of a fist hitting flesh. Max must have looked too scared or talked too much about it because later on that week Joyce came over and was almost in tears, begging Neil to let her take Billy, take care of him. She said she didn't want money or anything. There was more shouting then; he shouted her right off the porch. 

“Hopper had to do a whole restraining order and everything, after you got Billy,” Max says, kind of breathless. There’s a laugh in there somewhere, a little hint of terror. “Neil wouldn’t leave the Byers alone. He thought Joyce took him.”

One day, Max tells Steve about when Mr. Clarke was out sick and they didn’t have AV club and she got home early and when she went to say hi to her brother, Neil had a pillow over his head. The door was wide open. Susan was right outside, making dinner. 

+

Billy doesn’t get better, but he gets _better_. His hair grows back, soft blonde curls covering up that nasty scar, even if Steve can feel it still when he washes Billy’s hair. There’s a point where it really hits home that Mr. Harrington Absolutely Does Not Care what Steve does with the money he throws at him, so Steve looks into hiring someone to help him with Billy, teach him a little more than what Max told him, than what he found out already. 

She’s really nice, and when Steve starts school again he’s relieved that he can do what he needs to do and know that Billy is safe and clean and cared for. He gets to notice, too, that Billy is always looking at the door when Steve comes home, and when his face lights up Steve can honestly say that it is the first time in his life that someone has been happy when he comes home. 

It’s hard, though. Taking care of Billy is probably the hardest thing Steve has ever done in his life. Steve feels bad when he gets frustrated, gives up when Billy won’t eat or raises his voice when Billy pushes against him as Steve tries to move him into his chair. Feels even worse when he figures out Billy’s running a fever, or when he gets sick and Steve wonders how he missed it. Sometimes when the sun sets, Billy pulls at his own hair and looks at Steve like he’s afraid. Sometimes Billy screams in the night like he’s being killed, and Steve has to climb into his bed and hold him, hold him, hold him as he sobs.

But then sometimes, when Steve comes home early or ruffles his hair or even just says his name, Billy looks at him and smiles so, so big. Steve wonders, kind of sad, if Billy’s ever smiled like that in his life. 


End file.
